Hymn Beneath the Palisades
by The Hart and Hound
Summary: Glory, glory, hallelujah. [LuciferAlexiel, slight canon divergence.]


Title: Hymn Beneath the Palisades

Author: tsubaki-hana

Series: Angel Sanctuary

Rating: M

Disclaimer: Angel Sanctuary belongs to Kaori Yuki.

Summary: Glory, glory, hallelujah. Lucifer/Alexiel, slight divergence from canon.

* * *

_What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow _

_Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,_

_You cannot say, or guess, for you know only _

_A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, _

_And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, _

_And the dry stone no sound of water._

* * *

She spends her days in dreams, casually sitting in the throne that they have made for her, an ornate thing that is cold and hard against the soft planes of her own nakedness. She does not dwell on this much, for she feels it unfair that a mere chair be clothed in moss and the waves of her hair while she is exposed to all else. (_And Adam and Eve perceived their nakedness and were ashamed...isn't that what they always tell you?_)

Those that serve her, bring her crisp fruit and wine with a mechanical efficiency that she, a being of flesh and blood, does not seem able to achieve. Organic, they call her, like something natural and earthen and -not the same- as her beautiful brother.

"If I am so organic," she asks of a seraph, and she is still very young and new to the world when she does, "then why do I not break apart in the way that plants and animals do?"

"You were made to be eternal," they respond, smiling at her as they would upon a small child. But she is no child. She is young, yes, but the swell of her hips and the gaze of her eyes are already near a thousand years old, and she, first in Eden, feels the need to join into the earth and start anew. It is the _natural_ order of things to wither and decompose.

"You were meant to last forever for the pleasure of God."

"That hardly seems fair," she says ignorantly, and takes a sound **bite** out of the flesh of a fruit, and pretends she doesn't hear screams (_because you are eating a living thing, no matter what your sentries and maids say, because you feel nectar run down your lip in the way that you know blood runs from a wound, only this time it has no mouth with which to cry out._) She blesses her food long after she has already swallowed, twirling her fork idly and ignores the wrongness of it.

"It's not fair at all," she adds, feeling as though somehow her opinion were significant. The maids coo and braid her hair and wash her body with all the tenderness of broken glass. Their nails scrape, but she says nothing, hoping they wound her deeply.

* * *

The first time she is in the presence of her brother, she is not allowed to look on his face, but instead turns to face an elegant wood panel, carved with ivy and pauwlonia. There are no silver olive branches, she thinks with a smile, and there are no rough white bark branches from the Tree. Vaguely, she wonders if they were trying to make it look artificial. It is entirely too perfect, too lovely to be real.

It is likely for the best that her brother is not face to face with her, because no matter what love she has for him beating in the cage of her ribs (_no heart, she decides, because hearts eventually __stop working and they told her that she won't die_), she does not think she can face him in this bare body of hers, not when she knows that he loves her with an intensity that frightens her at times, but saddens her at most. He will not look upon her in the way that a brother ought to look upon his sister. He is far too concerned with trying to make her worship him, and he does this in any way that he can think of.

"I love you, you know," she hears him say, and she can imagine his perfect lips rounding around the words, accusative. "Why don't you love me too? Why don't you speak to me?"

As agreed, she does not respond. She can hear his frustration already. Though she has never actually seen him before, she likes to imagine that his eyes would be pleading and that he would not cease to love her even in his anger and loneliness. (_She knows better, of course, because even God hates her, and the idea of anyone thinking of her as anything other than a fixture in the Garden of Eden seems like wishful thinking_.) He will be beautiful in his suffering, he will be white and pure in the way that she cannot be with her tree root hair and red-fleshed from scrubbing in the fountains. When he cries out with joy or sorrow, he will be untouchable and clean while she is splotchy faced and breathless with fatigue and saline.

She dares to glance over her shoulder, just barely, filled with hope and bitterness all at once at the freedom and perfection of her brother. All she sees is a sliver of pale hair, snake-like and cold in the sunlight. Without actually knowing, she thinks that it would slither against her.

"You and I are twins," he says, unknowing of her gaze, caught up in his own passions. "We were meant to be together."

Forever, she thinks for him, smiling wryly to the not-leaves of the terrace windows. And together in what way? Forever is what she was made to be, and she resents it and resents him for bringing it up. He will be flawless forever and she will be forced, flexed, and grown until she cannot ever die, despite having been made to be a creature of death.

It is only their first meeting, she thinks with a laugh, and already Rociel has found a way to effectively upset her.

"I am quite tired of that word," she mutters to herself, and is relieved to know that her loving brother does not hear it. It is covered up by a breeze that stirs the artificial leaves that make up the Garden, and she thinks it quite suits Rociel.

As for her, well, she doesn't like the constant spring here. She wants everything, including herself, to disappear entirely and never be seen again.

* * *

She is only truly alone when she is sent away (_like some child_) to bathe, sitting awkwardly in a cotton shift that they deign to put her in. She finds it strange that they only feel the need to clothe her at the moment she truly needs to be laid bare, but she chalks it up to an ironic sense of humor. Alexiel appreciates irony; she's a walking example of it.

She never particularly cared for the spacious baths and fountains that were so easily found in Eden, but instead favored a shallow pool of water, very lonely in its grove of lotus trees and unkempt reeds. It is the wildest place she can find in this not-nature, and she makes the most of it, in the silt that floats to the top and the papyrus roots that catch on her (_perfectly shaped_) toes. If anything, she wishes she could sink all the way into it and feel the dirt cover her and give her something to plant her branch hair into.

Perhaps she will tomorrow. (_A bite of forbidden fruit today is far too tempting, even if she despises that voiceless screaming that comes from it.)_ Then she'll have something to think about until the next time Rociel deems her worthy of his presence or she strangles herself with her own hair. (_Ashes to ashes, dust to dust._)

She is ready to do that afternoon, when the bittersweet taste of the fruit and the corpse of birds that had been feasting on it surrounds her. There is something so very wrong, that death should be here before her (_yet nigh impossible for her to actually feel_).

She hears the sound of wind, strong wind that rattles the ivy and oleander outside, like the kind that Michael favors (_not Raphael, who never makes a fuss, not over something so trivial_) but it is cold. There is no fire and youthful frustration in this breeze, and Alexiel knows in the way that she knows the nature of all organic things, that it is not Michael that comes to her.

The room explodes into noise and vague pain (_Is it hers? Is it the birds? She can't tell against all of this dust and heat_), stone creaking and groaning against the ground, plaster falling, fresco peeling and shattering to the floors. The room is utterly destroyed and filled again with magnificence, water replaced with wine, and she drinks it deeply, torn with the terror of deer and other such wild things.

Four wings, she thinks with a laugh, four wings and me without the strength to do anything. Raising the ripples in the water, she watches with watery, human eyes the breaking of the surface, the well-polished boot and tatters-and-lace fabric of the man's coat. She does not look at him in the face. It is an angry one, and she does not wish to see such things (_not when only moments before she had planned, oh so carefully planned how best to drown herself without the stain of someone's rage, someone's bloodied hands._)

The power of his gaze is demanding, and without wholly knowing why, she meets it with her own hawkish intensity. He has grey eyes, she thinks, grey eyes like steel and rain. He makes her think of cold sea shores and brine, and my goodness, how wild and withdrawn he is all at once! There is nothing of true emotion between them, and for no apparent reason, this saddens her.

"Are you Alexiel?"

His voice is sepulchral. She shivers, but doesn't know if it is out of fear or delight.

She knows it is delight when she feels the displacement of air and the grip of his callused fingers against the column of her throat. He has forced her against the stone at the water's edge, where she can feel every bit of grit and decay against the small of her back and against her ribs. She counts heartbeats and creases in his fingers while his steel eyes glare into her. (_She also tries to think very hard about anything other than his hips, ground against his own to keep her still. In her thin slip, she is very aware of his masculinity, the smell of electricity, dust, and something spicy. Against what she knows she ought to do in battle, she feels herself lift and grind her own body into his, and disguises it as distress._)

Alexiel would smile, but thinks he might feel insulted and contains it behind a calm facade.

Even when he tells her that he will take her head and bring it before God for her sins (_oh right, she thinks, I seek to escape with death, to not hear that crying and misery from what she is made to eat and understand that it kills all things fading __**except for her**_) she is still yet calm, observing his features with the steady eye of an artist.

How perfect he made you, she thinks, how perfect he made you without the desire to be mortal, to decay. How perfect God has made his villain(_and how does she know that?_), the player in his act, and for a brief moment, Alexiel allows her to envy him. She tastes the dirt and smells the metal of his sword against her neck, but he withdraws it, slowly, as to barely cut the flesh of her neck, and draws a hand from her side to her neck. The other hand buries into her hair.

"With my hands I will corrupt God's daughter and ruin all his plans."

The arches of the roof echo down to her, and he curses her an emotionless woman, unfeeling and unaware of the poison that she eats every day, pulling her hair ruthlessly (_those roots, those roots in the pool that will pull her down_). She does not disagree entirely, though she had never known of the venom that she had felt burn down her throat like clockwork.

For no reason at all, she begins to feel angry and mild underneath the weight of his body. He pulls her up and buries his face in the crook of her neck, speaking against the white (_dirty, sweaty, disgusting ageless human_)skin. His tongue flicks against her collarbone with each sibilant hiss of his rage. She tries very hard to not feel jealous of his flawless lips, marble white against the freckles of her shoulders.

"I am Lucifer," he says in a lilting manner, "the same one that God has planned to become the leader of Hell." Lucifer smiles bitterly against her shoulder, and she feels his teeth catch between his lips and her own bared chest. "Incredible, isn't it? God's favorite, and second to only Adam Kadamon in my power, yet I am _destined _(_this he hisses wickedly_) to be something else."

Alexiel understands this, in the way that all broken people do. She knows what it feels to be something else other than what she wishes, a contradiction. But she has only before been angered by her required silence, her ultimate binding to a piece of glorious land, and perhaps a few marks on her skin that make her human looking but not human at all. (_God grows trees in flower pots, and snips off their limbs the moment they mean to leave their bounds, until all there is left is crippled plants._)

However, his anger is far greater than hers will ever be. There is a sorrow in him that Alexiel only experiences in emptiness and bitterness. He trembles above her, suppressing his anger in the only way that he knows how. He is as tight as a spring, and Alexiel thinks of fig trees, that strain and push until they break their foundations, weave them into themselves so that the environment conforms to them.

"So I will destroy that which god loves best. That will make them all so _very_ happy, won't it?" His hand is a vice in her hair, pulling until she thinks she can hear her skin pulling away from her skull in tearing and clumps of bloody hair. He will kill her if she continues as she does, and for some reason, despite an anger that she feels filling her belly, this feels like a betrayal of what _ought_ to be, as though moments were inherently chosen to happen in a particular way.

She weaves herself into him with the press of her legs against his own, breathing against the cool leather of his uniform. The stone behind him, the vines on the wall, they reach out to her, to _them_, and she only wishes that they were somehow closer, under each other's skin. Maybe then, he would understand that she understands as well.

On some level, she hopes that he will in turn weave into her.

He pauses, breathes hotly against her shoulder as though he is running. "What are you playing at?" he asks. His look at her is piercing and bright, questioning and above all else dangerous. Alexiel tries not to shudder when he experimentally moves back against her hips, one hand dipping dangerously low against her thigh to pull up on the hem of her dress. She feels every fine hair on her body rise underneath his teasing glance of fingers.

"You should not play games with me, Alexiel."

Alexiel does not play games. She goes to battle. With a harrowing glance of her own, she meets his eyes, searching for the mockery behind it. She could not bear it if she showed her sympathy and had it thrown back into her face. (_There is so little you have to sympathize with at all. It is the nature of life to act out against anything that might oppose it, and so it grows in your veins and spider branches into your clenched fists._)

In his eyes is only curiosity, and perhaps the spark of something whiter and warm. Desire, she thinks it is called, and feels her body give a deep flash of yearning to feel this one thing as all the human beings that she is designed to imitate also do.

He feels her consent in the clenched fist that spreads and lies back against the ground, her neck stretched in an arch to show the column of white throat to him. It is a challenge to him, and she does so enjoy a good contest. If he takes her on in this supposed game now, she will have both lost and won something, and she cannot feel any regret in being on a losing team for once.

They sit still for a moment, and Alexiel listens to the distant coo of the mourning dove she knows will be on the northern veranda, waiting for her in her empty throne. Lucifer only contemplates the slender line of the branching veins in her neck, the marks and spots from the sun on her shoulder, and the intensity of her dark gaze. (_You have never been dark before now, but you are only too happy to be disobedient, maybe just once, maybe forever._)

It is as the room exploding into heat again when at last he moves, throwing her against the ground, ripping the fine linen of her dress shift as though it were naught but a leaf. First a shoulder is bared, where he places his searing mouth against her collarbone, his other hand rising against her thigh to glance against her own wet heat and grasp with (_talons_) nails against her hip.

For her, everything is in the folds of his uniform, in the scorch of his lips, the softness of his hair which she feels pulled between her own fingers. She very nearly shudders herself into blindness when his hands slide back down to bury themselves inside her where she knows that she is ready and waiting with lust. His fingers are still gloved when he does so, the glossy leather feeling cold, but warming, _warming _in her shuddering body.

"How I corrupt you so," he says into the shell of her ear, ripping the remainder of the cloth from her, his steel eyes becoming molten and pouring over her, curling his fingers inside her in time with her own heartbeat. (_And he measures it by the tick of your eyes, the slightest quiver of your eyelids and pulsing red beneath them. How he can know you so intimately and have never met you before now I beyond you, but he is more in time with this need, this fleshy body than you thought possible. _)

Alexiel is a strong woman, but against this, she cannot help the small sounds that escape her throat, though she would love nothing more than to choke them out of her. But Lucifer will hear nothing of it, and bears down on her throat until she is gasping and moaning for air, the coiling in her abdomen and the strangling utterly destroying her composure.

She sees his smile, his elation at this minor defeat, this loss of face, but does not allow herself to become incensed. Instead she is buried in the feeling of him driving his hand further yet into her.

"It's too much," she manages at last, her chest heaving against his chest. He ignores her and takes the tip of a breast into his mouth, his eyes meeting hers. She feels herself flush with embarrassment and pleasure.

It feels like it goes on forever, even if it is only a few moments, and when she arches back, she can see nothing but the stone ceilings and the coils of his dark hair that have come to rest up against her chin and mouth. Everything else has become brightness and shape, hardly anything recognizable. She curls a leg around his and hopes that she doesn't pass out. (_Never have you experienced anything like this, and how it pierces your very being._)

She also tries not to cry when he pulls his hand out of her and raises his gloved hand between the two of them. Against her nakedness, she can feel the slickness of his fingers, sliding between the planes of her breasts. She wonders at the smell and taste of it, but instead watches with rapt attention when Lucifer (you will not ever call him Lucifiel) pulls his glove off and brings it to his face.

"Not yet," he says, inhaling sharply. "This not done yet."

"No, it isn't," she agrees, quivering with a new found coldness and need. She had been close to . . . close to what? She does not know how to describe this quicksilver feeling, this pain that does not make her bleed.

He laughs, something sharp and biting in her ears. "Are you familiar with this, Alexiel? This . . . " he pauses, and licks her lips, "blasphemy? This, what we are doing now is supposed to be against our very natures. I had thought you above this."

"You understand so little," says Alexiel, and looks away.

His anger returns, doubled, perhaps tripled in the face of her dismissal. He sneers from above her, and jerks on her hair to make her stand, where she does so reluctantly. She is disgusted that her legs shake in weakness, that she feels her own slickness between her legs. Lucifer only smiles and drags her against him, always pushing her farther into the blurred corners of the room. (_In his own way, though, you know that he is very careful because not once does he make you step foot on the shrapnel and stone that he has created, very tenderly lifting you over it. You do not think long on it, instead focusing on the harshness of his grip around your waist where you can already feel the welts that will grow, bloom, and flourish underneath his long fingers._)

The wall is cold when at last she feels her back come to rest against it, shivering when the jasmine and creeper glance across her arms and neck. He tilts her back against it, and she feels herself lifted, lifted until she is carefully balanced between Lucifer's body and an outcropping of stone.

"I shall end this little game," he whispers. But to whom, she isn't sure. For some reason, she has the feeling that it wasn't meant for her at all.

He enters her swiftly and mercilessly, but does not move when she thrashes against the wall, clutching and throwing him toward and away from her. She is complete in this moment, but she is in pain and she is not entirely sure what it is that she _does_ want. All she can think to do against this man who looks at her pitilessly, but with such emotion.

"Will you be defeated by such a little thing?" he asks, petting her hair and clenching his teeth with her every movement.

"No," she says between her own twisted smile.

He moves again, and she throws her hands into the jasmine and creeper, shifting, driving, feeling herself pushed into that tangle of vines until all she can do is clutch and cry until she feels nothing but the slickness of his body and thorns and leaves of the plants, and she is thrown between the two until she does not know where he stops and the vines begin.

Their eyes meet, amidst all the cloudiness of her vision, and she sees written there a desperation, not at all unlike her own, like he doesn't know exactly where he is either and that only in this moment can he be defined. There is resentment, there is anger, and there is a horrible smugness in which he knows that he has fulfilled exactly what he meant to do. While one hand supports her weight on the ledge, she feels the other shoot forward to her neck and push her head high up into the branches and sweet white flowers that almost nauseate her in their softness. Again, she becomes lightheaded, feels herself absolutely redden with exertion, and gasps into the silhouette of the wall as she rides the dizziness and fright of her coming. (_Glory, glory, hallelujah_.)

I don't want to die, she thinks, and the sweat from her brow is the bitter sweetness of the fruit all over again. Her hair is in tangles around her shoulders and neck, and she knows that if he lets her down, she will choke when the branches pull her locks up and around her throat..

But he doesn't. Instead he exhales into the crook of her neck, spent with his own pleasure, and kisses the skin above where her heart ought to be. He still does not look her in the face, but eases her down the wall to be smothered up against him, still fully clothed in his uniform, zippers and brass buttons catching on the lines and joints of her body.

"And so I destroy the purity of His precious twins, yes?" he says in a laugh, breathy and hot against her own sweaty skin. (_He does not sweat, not the way that you do, and for a moment you feel self-conscious of the humanity of your form_.) "Now all that is left is to kill you, I suppose."

With strength that she does not feel like she ought to possess, she pushes herself away from the cage of his arms, standing firmly and resolutely against the wall. She does not allow herself the humor that he allows himself, instead reaching to his side where even now she can feel the blade of his sword, sheathed _but worn_ throughout the entire experience.

She grabs and unsheathes it against his neck.

"I wasn't all that pure to begin with."

She swallows. "And I never let someone have the upper hand of me for long."

He smiles warmly, and her heart almost breaks with the sincerity of it.

And now they understand each other. (_And always you will recall that when next you meet, it is as he says. You are his woman. And that, in turn, you consider him your man. He's given you quite a lot to think about vines and fruit and that which you cannot have_.)

* * *

_Only there is shadow under this red rock, _

Come in under the shadow of this red rock

_And I will show you something different from either _

_Your shadow at morning striding behind you _

_Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; _

_I will show you fear in a handful of dust._

-T.S. Eliot

* * *

End.

* * *

Notes: Thuis, of course, diverges from the canon meeting of Alexiel and Lucifer pretty much from the moment the foreplay begins. Canonically, Lucifer ought to try and kill Alexiel first, but instead I decided to let the lady have the first go at things.

Well, Adriana, I hope it was worth the wait. My porn skills are neither mad nor leet.


End file.
